When the New York City public-school system mandated a new curriculum designed to teach “the positive aspects” of homosexuality, officials confidently assumed no one could overturn their decision. To their chagrin, an assortment of parents, school boards, and religiously based coalitions rose up to challenge the largest public-school system in the nation. Not only did they win concessions in the curriculum, but they also contributed to the chancellor of schools losing his job at the end of June.
At issue is a multicultural curriculum known as Children of the Rainbow, inaugurated in 1991 through the impetus of school chancellor Joseph A. Fernandez. The required usage affects all 930,000 students, from kindergarten through high school, in New York City’s 32 school districts.
Portions of the document, which, according to the New York Times, were “prepared with little oversight by a teacher who is a lesbian,” almost immediately came under attack for their implications that tolerance means complete acceptance. Some of the Rainbow Curriculum’s recommended books, Daddy’s Roommate, Heather Has Two Mommies, and Gloria Goes to Gay Pride, got flak on educational grounds as well. “They’re poorly written, lack creative illustrations,” say some curriculum experts, “and tell stories that would be difficult for young children to follow.”
The first school board to go public in an open refusal to use the Rainbow Curriculum was District 24 in western Queens. In August 1992, the board distributed a blunt mailing to its 22,000 parents, in which board president Mary A. Cummins said, “We will not accept two people of the same sex engaged in deviant sex practices as ‘family.’ ”
She, like most in the school district, is Roman Catholic, but she tells ...
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